Fiction Short Stories (single Author)
Dibidalen
Ten Stories
- Publisher
- Thistledown Press
- Initial publish date
- Oct 2012
- Category
- Short Stories (single author)
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781927068069
- Publish Date
- Oct 2012
- List Price
- $18.95
Classroom Resources
Where to buy it
Description
Seán Virgo knows the power of short fiction. He knows that the act of storytelling is hardwired into human consciousness and that the well-told story can appear in various shapes and sizes. The full force of Virgo's writing energy in Dibidalen is directed by this knowledge. We see this clearly in the exquisite simplicity of the collection's opening pieces - 'Before Ago' and 'Eggs in a Field' - where he uses verse fable and folktale interchangeably forging the stories' links to a preliterate oral culture. Other stories employ the power of allegory as witnessed in 'Shark Mother' and 'The Scapegoat'. Here Virgo employs traditional transcendentalism to allow nature to open a deeper understanding of human affairs. How does a boy transform into a shark? Why was the woodsman abandoned in the deserted city? Virgo's commitment to the form's mercurial possibilities continues in 'The Doorway' and 'The Castaway' where the reader must grapple with how to personalize archetypal symbols in order to understand a woman's fate, or assign meanings to the actions of a doubting priest to realize his destiny. Again in 'Rendezvous' and 'Gramayre' we discover a blended mix of fantasy and magical realism where fusions of the everyday, the illusory, the mythical, and the morbid blur traditional distinctions between what happened and what we think happened. Finally, in Virgo's most extrapolated stories, 'The Likeness' and 'Dibidalen', we are led on with the fractures and abstractions of the narratives that redirect each story's unexpected conclusion. The result is a fascinating dance between reader and text that is as rewarding as it is challenging, reminding us of what Anaïs Nin meant when she said, 'We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.'
About the author
Seán Virgo was born in Malta, and grew up in South Africa, Malaya, Ireland and the U.K. He immigrated to Canada in 1966 and became a citizen in 1972. He has published a number of works of both poetry and fiction including: Pieces for the Old Earth Man(1974); Island (1975); Selected Poems (1990); White Lies & Other Fictions (1981); Through the Eyes of a Cat (1983); Selakhi (1987); Wormwood (1989); and Waking in Eden (1991). His work has won various awards, including the CBC Competition (first prize for fiction, 1979); The BBC 3 Short Story Competition (first prize, 1980); and National Magazine Awards (first prize for both Poetry [1979] and Fiction [1990 ]).
Excerpt: Dibidalen: Ten Stories (by (author) Seán Virgo)
There was a boy who was born by a river where ships came in from every place in the world. When he grew older he went down after school to the quays where the sailors gathered and threw dice and waited for the tide to turn. He ran errands for them and brought them the news of the town, and one day a brown winking man with eyes as pale as a sea bird's whispered the words that he longed above all things to hear.
He went back to his house, and pulled out his father's old sea chest from under the stair, and dried his mother's tears.
That night he stood on a ship's deck and watched as the lights of the town disappeared and the river gave way to the sea; and he breathed that salt air for the next forty years, growing to manhood and becoming in turn a boatswain, a mate, and at last the master of his own tall ship, sailing the Seven Seas.
The sea of gold and silver, where the sirens conjured the winds.
The sea of furs and amber, where the great whale fishes blew.
The sea of nutmegs and parrots and cloves.
The sea of rubies and peacocks and tea.
The sea of apes and ivory, where the slaves cried out in the hold.
The sea of silk and china and pearls, where the pirates haunted the bays.
And the ancient sea at the heart of them all, where the trade routes began
and ended.
He came back each year to the river where he began, and each year he passed a green headland with a lighthouse beacon, and a long spit of sand that sheltered the harbour below. Gulls hung on the wind above the white church on the hillside, and sheep dotted the bracken slopes behind the houses. He told himself he would make his home there someday, when he was done with the sea.
In the year that his mother died, he sailed far to the south and west, through a chain of islands where palm trees leaned over the strands, and there one night, lying at anchor on a dark lagoon, he watched men carrying torches out over the water while women sang and danced on the reef, calling the bonito fish in to the nets. And a girl rose laughing beside his ship, waist-deep in the foam, her teeth gleaming in the torchlight.
He came back that way, on his voyage home, and searched through the islands until he found her. He brought her away with him, back to the river of his birth, and sold his ship and bought a house in the town on the green headland, and became the harbour master there. And there their son was born.
The boy grew up in a silent house. His father seemed a different person at home from the man who took him sometimes to the excise house down at the harbour, or to the tavern beside it. There, among sailors and fishermen, with his traveller's tales and shanty songs, he was full of quick jests and laughter, but as they walked back through the town his steps grew heavier and gloom settled over his face. They ate their meals in silence, and the boy's mother never sat with them.
She moved like a shadow through the house, with timid eyes and downturned mouth, but her touch was the softest thi 9781927068021 13
Editorial Reviews
'It's a joy to see a fiction writer deploying his imaginative powers to the full in an age when given the dominance of fact the imagination itself is under suspicion.' - National Post
'Seán Virgo is a wonderful writer.' - Globe & Mail
'One of the best in Canada ... what continues to astonish about Seán Virgo is his incredible virtuosity.' -Toronto Star
'A gift for language ... forceful yet understated, the sure mark of a talented artist.' - Times Literary Supplement
'He brings the meticulous richness of poetry to his prose ... vibrant with a subtle eroticism.' - Maclean's Magazine
'Shattering intensity ... haunting, beautiful, intense, absorbing ... very sensual.' - Books In Canada
'A superb confidence ... monstrously ambitious ... [a visceral, erotic sense of language.' - Saturday Night
